Passion play fiasco is sad indictment of ignorant Britain

DID you hear about the passion play in Oxford denied a performance licence because one of the city council’s officials mistakenly imagined that “passion” meant “sex show” rather than a religious production traditionally shown at Easter?

The Passion play, which tells the crucifixion story of Jesus Christ, was mistaken for a sex show [GETTY]

The story would be quite funny if it weren’t such a depressing example of just how ignorant we British have become about our Christian heritage.

A generation or two ago almost everyone in the country would have known that the “passion” (from the Greek for “to suffer”) was the name given to the period from Christ’s entry to Jerusalem on a donkey up to the Last Supper, the agony in the garden and his Crucifixion.

Today chances are the vast majority of people don’t even know it’s Good Friday, let alone why the day a man was put to death on a cross might be considered in any way “good”.

The reason I know this stuff is not because I’m a particularly religious man but because as a child I went to Sunday school (where we learned stories from the Bible) and because at my schools we had to attend daily chapel and study divinity. There was nothing unusual about this upbringing.

My parents weren’t rampant Godbotherers or anything. It was just a normal part of growing up in Britain in the 1970s, in much the same way that watching The Two Ronnies was. Or sitting down as a family to eat Sunday lunch and not being able to go to the shops because they were closed.

When my own children were a bit younger I tried giving them the same experience. Partly this was for selfish reasons: I couldn’t bear it if my kids weren’t as enthused as I am by rousing hymns such as Jerusalem or if they were cynical atheists. Partly it’s because I believe Christianity is a vital part of our national culture.

We don’t know when exactly Christianity came to Britain but there were Christians here by the 2nd century and it was well-established by the 4th century. That means that for at least 1,700 years our national culture has been permeated with Christian ritual, tradition and knowledge.

We see it in our churches and cathedrals; in ancient stone crosses; in the timing of our holidays (all schools break for Easter and Christmas); in our art, music and literature. Especially our literature.

The language of the Book Of Common Prayer and the King James Bible are part of our everyday speech: “till death us do part”; “movable feast”; “for richer for poorer”; “ashes to ashes”; “all things to all men”; “God forbid”; “holier than thou”; “den of thieves”; “sheep’s clothing”; “woe is me”; “land of Nod” – and there’s barely a book in the English language, from the Anglo-Saxon era’s Dream Of The Rood up to Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings, which isn’t in some way indebted to Christian tradition.

It’s this cultural loss which is perhaps the worst thing about the national abandonment of what until recently was our national religion. (Church of England, anyone?) Sure, there are lots of other problems with it: the way so many gullible idiots in need of a replacement faith have embraced the pagan Gaia worship of environmentalism; the way we no longer feel bound to behave well on Earth for fear of judgment in the afterlife; the death of marriage and the family.

It’s this cultural loss which is perhaps the worst thing about the national abandonment of what until recently was our national religion

But for a country which so prides itself on its glorious past it is surely a tragedy beyond measure that we have so casually cast aside the religion that for nearly 2,000 years helped define our national identity. And the people to blame for this as much as anyone are our Christian leaders.

How appropriate that this passion play embarrassment should have occurred in Oxford, the city whose bishop lent his support to demands by local Muslims that they be allowed to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer through loudspeakers. So what does this say about the spinelessness and political correctness of our clerics?

Is it any wonder church attendance is in decline when modern British Christianity appears to be more concerned with gay marriage and saving the planet from the imaginary threat of “man-made global warming” than it is with worshipping God?

Our schools are no better. Religious studies are still on the curriculum in one form or another but – thanks to the pernicious influence of the Leftwing doctrine of multiculturalism – Christianity is now treated as but one religion among many, with no special claim to a British child’s attention.

If there’s space for lessons on Diwali or Eid, fine. But surely the first priority ought still to be to give children a basic grounding in those biblical stories which until quite recently would have been considered their birthright?

This isn’t so much a faith issue – it really doesn’t matter what religious background a child comes from or how devout he or she is – as a cultural one. If you don’t know the story of, say, Moses parting the Red Sea or the wedding at Cana, or Lazarus rising from the dead, how are you ever to understand half the cultural references in the British literary tradition?

This is why I shall be taking my family to church this Easter. Not because I’m worried about burning in hell or because I’m born again or because I want to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

Rather, mainly, because it is the religion of my ancestors (whose names are written in copperplate in my family Bible), it is the religion of our heritage and the religion that made our country great.